This is rather funny. In my "Academic Ethics" column last week for CHE, I wrote:

The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, Campus Watch, The College Fix, Breitbart, and College Insurrection, among others, devote themselves with some regularity to policing faculty speech, and then presenting it — sometimes accurately, mostly inaccurately — in order to inflame public outrage and incite harassment of academics who expressed verboten views. Because American law gives very wide latitude to malicious speech for partisan political ends, there is little legal recourse for faculty members subjected to such harassment.

Only "Campus Watch" felt the need to call attention to itself and respond, in a letter CHE published (I don't fault CHE for posting their self-serving and fact-free nonsense, about which I'll say more in a moment). Now Wikipedia reports rather candidly, with sources, on "Campus Watch" and its reputation as smear merchants who incite harassment, so none of this is even remotely controversial, but the goal of smear merchants is always to distract attention with sanctimonious posturing. The letter itself, written by one Winfield Myers, is comedy gold, looked at the right way. We begin, as required by every known law of psychoanalysis, with projection:

Of course, it is Campus Watch that smears faculty who depart from its far right line on permissible views about Israel and the Middle East, but the first rule of being a smear merchant is to pose as a victim.

Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, critiques Middle East studies by holding professors accountable for their work.

The "Middle East Forum" is the vehicle of Daniel Pipes, who has been aptly described as a "misinformation expert." So "Campus Watch" is really just the creation of Daniel Pipes, but the first rule of being a front organization for a political polemicist is to pretend to be an organization (a "forum," no less, suggesting reasoned dialogue and debate) rather than a front for an individual's ideological jihad.

It does not “police faculty speech”; how could it when it lacks any and all police power?

You know you've fallen down the rabbit hole of slimy dishonesty when simple metaphors, familiar to any competent speaker of the language, are dismissed with the help of literalism ill-befitting a middle school English student. The response might have been relevant had I written that Campus Watch "exercises its powers as deputized officers to regulate faculty speech," but I didn't write that of course. Every competent speaker of the language knows that "to police" is a synonym for, e.g., to "watch over," to "protect," to "patrol," to "control" and so on, depending on context of usage. So Mr. Myers's flat-footed rhetorical flourish about lacking "any and all police power" is obviously irrelevant and non-responsive.

It does not “inflame public opinion and incite harassment” of academics but engages in careful, multiple fact-checked analyses.

...and he's also mystified why a serious journal is devoting an issue to it. If other parts of philosophy had as clear Wissenschaftlich standards as philosophy of language/linguistics does, there' be more protests of this kind.

(Thanks to Peter Ludlow for the pointer.)

UPDATE: I've heard from one well-known philosopher and one well-known psychologist telling me that things are not quite as simple as they appear. The psychologist, for example, wrote:

Re the Hornstein post, you're way overestimating the degree of agreement among linguists (I don't know about philosophy of language) re standards of evidence, argumentation, what counts as progress, which issues have been resolved or are open, etc.

The book in question addresses many issues that remain contentious in modern linguistics. The author apparently takes positions that Hornstein deeply opposes. I have not read the book and do not know if the arguments are any good, but the questions are valid ones, and matters of ongoing debate. The journal in question is at least as credible as the others he mentions, and less parochial, so airing the disagreements is a reasonable thing to do--assuming the book is not poorly done, not merely at variance with NH's personal views. The Language editorial board includes many outstanding scholars—including ones who compare favorably to Hornstein I would say. It is not heavily weighted to the traditional MIT/generative grammar side of the field, however. But the current MIT department doesn’t seem to be either!

Norbert is a keeper of the Chomskyan faith. That approach and set of beliefs has faded in prominence and acceptance, mainly because it got overtaken by progress achieved by other approaches. The fate of Chomsky's proposals about language (structure, origins, acquisition, brain bases) will be a great case study in the history of ideas. Pinker's popularizations bought the approach some extra time, but most of the important claims turn out to have been wrong (e.g., that language is an "instinct," that there is a "language organ", that language is unrelated to other types of cognition, or to other forms of communication, etc.).

It's been amazing to watch how the events have played out over the past 40 years, since I got into it.

You can now expect to receive responses to the effect that these comments are as worthless as that book. The line between intensive intellectual debate and trolling is a thin one.

ADDENDUM: A reader sends along this sophomoric prattle; The Monist must have fallen on hard times to be publishing material like this. The abstract alone will probably be enough for most readers, but do press on, it gives one real insight into the nether regions of the 'profession' where no actual intellectual standards prevail. Imagine, an entire paper organized around an alleged "conflation" that any smart undergraduate would avoid!

In my view, in this book Fuller lends support to some dicey propositions, including creationism and intelligent design, the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, neurotheology, and transhumanism, not to mention an epistemology of divine psychology. By itself that would not trouble me. What troubles me -- I should say, annoys me -- is that he just avers these things. There is very little argument in this book. In place of it are obsessive self-citations to the author's other publications. That annoyed me because I had time and occasion to read his new book, only to find out that I cannot understand it without reading twenty others by the same author, including maybe even his dissertation. Without studying the earlier books, I can't understand the point of this one, yet nothing in this one makes me want to read those others.

One does begin to wonder whether Fuller is really bonkers, or whether this is all simply to be chalked up to narcissistic stupidity.

She put Rahm Emmanuel in his place a couple of years ago, now she's going after our new Republican Governor (I hope she's wrong with the Scott Walker comparison, but since these people all confer with each other and none are capable of actual critical thought and decision-making, I fear she may be right).

You decide, but Prof. Karzarian is certainly giving John Protevi a run for the money! I reprint this amusing display in whole below the fold, since, as several who sent it to me observed, it may not last:

...you were wrong. As far as I know, this is the only document in existence that concludes that Linda Alcoff's objections to the PGR (which are, indeed, utterly specious and self-serving!) shouldn't be taken seroiusly because I hate Republicans.

I am not going apologize if I am occasionally rude to an ill-informed overpaid Harvard professor making absurd pronouncements on economics that have the effect of obstructing policy aimed at ending unnecessary suffering.

Pomposity can be amusing, but pomposity sitting like an oversized hat on top of fear is hilarious. Wieseltier is afraid that the humanities are being overrun by thinkers from outside, who dare to tackle their precious problems--or "problematics" to use the, um, technical term favored by many in the humanities. He is right to be afraid. It is true that there is a crowd of often overconfident scientists impatiently addressing the big questions with scant appreciation of the subtleties unearthed by philosophers and others in the humanities, but the way to deal constructively with this awkward influx is to join forces and educate them, not declare them out of bounds.

Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education called my attention last week to this putative review by Steve Fuller of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos; the review was aptly described by another correspondent as "a largely content-free mix of self-promotion and derogation of his Enemies, in which you held the place of honour." (Michael Weisberg, co-author of the review in The Nation, is not on Fuller's "Enemies list" so was erased from Fuller's score-settling.) Just to give the flavor of Fuller's "review," a short excerpt:

Another day, another tedious tirade from the pompous Leon Wieseltier. This one is a long take-down of Paul Ryan and his idolatry of Ayn Rand. Such high-minded seriousness! I am reminded of Dick Cheney, attired in military fatigues, hunting quail with his assault weapons.

What caught my eye amid all the fulmination and folk wisdom--there are few arguments or supporting evidence of any kind to be found--is how Wieseltier casually pronounces Atlas Shrugged and Also Sprach Zarathustra to be in the same category of adolescent sins and chides Rand and Marx for advancing economic theories towards moral ends, albeit antithetical ones.

This is embarrassing even by Wieseltier's low standards. Granted a lot of adolescents are excited by Nietzsche when they encounter him (even if for all the wrong reasons), and the inscrutable Zarathustra is plainly not his best work (or perhaps the clearest exposition of his views). But to draw any kind of equivalence between the works of these 2 thinkers (if you can charitably call Rand one) is so buffoonish that one is left wondering who the adolescent in this discussion is.

UPDATE: As Catarina Dutilh Novaes continues to dig, the best line in response is due to Dan Kervick: "I can't think of a time in my life when I thought, 'Damn, I wish my penis were more sensitive!'"

ANOTHER: 24 hours later, and there's still no apology for the ludicrous comparison of circumcision to female genital mutilation, but a link to a video has been added. The video is remarkable for being almost totaly irrelevant to the comparison at issue, but perhaps Dutilh Novaes is counting on no one really watching it. Still, the comments are worth reading to get a sense of how utterly nuts some people are.

George Mason University economics professor, Dr.Don Bourdreaux believes that professional economists have done a poor jobexplaining basic economic truths to the general public. His passion is to better explain those truths to broad audiences and in his newest book, Hypocrites & Half-Wits: A Daily Dose of Sanity from Café Hayek, he tries to do so with short, pithy letters-to-the-editor, mostly aimed at correcting common misunderstandings of economics.

I would love to put you in touch with Dr. Boudreaux. He can provide non-partisan insight and commentary on any economic or political stories you may be working on, in a way that is easily accessible and understandable to the general public. Review copies of his newest book, Hypocrites & Half-Wits are available and I’d be happy to send you a copy. He would also be available to provide an article for publication if interested.

I have provided some further info on Dr. Boudreaux as well as some potential story ideas below. Thanks for taking a look and I hope to hear from you soon.

As I pointed out to Ms. MacDonald-Birnbaum, someone living on Planet Hayek is not a "non-partisan" expert, indeed, not even an expert, let alone a purveyor of "economic truth[s]." I can understand sending out hack solicitations like this to journalists and other gullible types, but to send this crap to scholars (I assume I'm not the only academic blogger who got it) is unbelievable. SmithPublicity is now in my spam filter. Nice job!